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THE APPETITE OF 
TYRANNY 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

The Defendant 

Varie:"* Types 

Charles Dickens. A Critical Study 

The Man Who Was Thursday 

Tremendous Trifles 

What's Wrong with the World 

Alarms and Discursions 

A Miscellany of Men 

The Defence of Nonsense, and 
Other Essays 

Wit and Wisdom of G. K. Chester- 
ton, Selected and Arranged 
BY His Wife 

The Appetite op Tyranny, In- 
cluding Letters to an Old 
Garibaldian 



THE APPETITE 
OF TYRANNY 

Including Letters to an 
Old Garibaldian 

By 
G. K. CHESTERTON 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1915 



J 



^?3 



Copyright, 1915, by 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 



MAR il 1915 

ni.A397057 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

The Facts of the Case 
I The War on the Word 
II The Refusal of Reciprocity 
III The Appetite of Tyranny . 
IV The Escape of Folly . 

Letters to an Old Garibaldian 



PAGE 

1 
15 

ai 

50 
66 

80 



THE FACTS OF THE CASE 

Unless we are all mad, there is at the back 
of the most bewildering business a story: 
and if we are all mad, there is no such thing 
as madness. If I set a house on fire, it is 
quite true that I may illuminate many other 
people's weaknesses as well as my own. It 
may be that the master of the house was 
burned because he was drunk; it may be that 
the mistress of the house was burned because 
she was stingy, and perished arguing about 
the expense of the fire-escape. It is, never- 
theless, broadly true that they both were 
burned because I set fire to their house. 
That is the story of the thing. The. mere 
facts of the story about the present European 
conflagration are quite as easy to tell. 

Before we go on to the deeper things which 
make this war the most sincere war of human 



2 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

history, it is easy to answer the question of 
why England came to be in it at all, as one 
asks how a man fell down a coal-hole, or 
failed to keep an appointment. Facts are 
not the w^hole truth. But facts are facts, 
and in this case the facts are few and simple. 
Prussia, France, and England had all prom- 
ised not to invade Belgium. Prussia pro- 
posed to invade Belgium, because it was the 
safest way of invading France. But Prus- 
sia promised that if she might break in, 
through her own broken promise and ours, 
she would break in and not steal. In other 
words, we were offered at the same instant a 
promise of faith in the future and a proposal 
of perjury in the present. Those interested 
in human origin may refer to an old Vic- 
torian writer of English, who, in the last and 
most restrained of his historical essays, wrote 
of Frederick the Great, the founder of this 
unchanging Prussian policy. After describ- 



THE FACTS OF THE CASE 3 

ing how Frederick broke the guarantee he had 
signed on behalf of Maria Theresa, he then 
describes how Frederick sought to put things 
straight by a promise that was an insult. "If 
she would but let him have Silesia, he would, 
he said, stand by her against any power 
which should try to deprive her of her other 
dominions, as if he was not already bound to 
stand by her, or as if his new promise could 
be of more value than the old one." That 
passage was written by Macaulay, but so far 
as the mere contemporary facts are con- 
cerned, it might have been written by me. 

Upon the immediate logical and legal ori- 
gin of the English interest there can be no 
rational debate. There are some things so 
simple that one can almost prove them with 
plans and diagrams, as in Euclid. One 
could make a kind of comic calendar of what 
would have happened to the English diplo- 
matist if he had been silenced every time by 



4 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

Prussian diplomacy. Suppose we arrange it 
in the form of a kind of diary. 

July 24. Germany invades Belgium. 

July 25. England declares war. 

July 26. Germany promises not to an- 
nex Belgium. 

July 27. England withdraws from the 
war. 

July 28. Germany annexes Belgium. 
England declares war. 

July 29. Germany promises not to an- 
nex France. England withdraws from the 
war. 

July 30. Germany annexes France. 
England declares war. 

July 31. Germany promises not to an- 
nex England. 

Aug. 1. England withdraws from the 
war. Germany invades England . . . 

How long is anybody expected to go with 
that sort of game, or keep peace at that 



THE FACTS OF THE CASE 5 

illimitable price? How long must we pur- 
sue a road in which promises are all fetishes 
in front of us and all fragments behind us? 
No : upon the cold facts of the final negotia- 
tions, as told by any of the diplomatists 
in any of the documents, there is no doubt 
about the story. And no doubt about the 
villain of the story. 

These are the last facts — the facts which 
involved England. It is equally easy to 
state the first facts — the facts which involved 
Europe. The Prince who practically ruled 
Austria was shot by certain persons whom the 
Austrian Government believed to be con- 
spirators from Servia. The Austrian Gov- 
ernment piled up arms and armies, but said 
not a word either to Servia their suspect or 
Italy their ally. From the documents it 
would seem that Austria kept everybody in 
the dark, except Prussia. It is probably 
nearer the truth to say that Prussia kept 



6 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

everybody in tJie dark, including Austria. 
But all that is what is called opinion, belief, 
conviction or common-sense, and we are not 
dealing with it here. The objective fact is 
that Austria told Servia to permit Servian 
officers to be suspended by the authority of 
Austrian officers, and told Servia to submit 
to this within forty-eight hours. In other 
words, the sovereign of Servia was practically 
told to take off not only the laurels of two 
great campaigns but his own lawful and na- 
tional crown, and to do it in a time in which 
no respectable citizen is expected to discharge 
an hotel bill. Servia asked for time, for ar- 
bitration — in short, for peace. But Prussia 
had already begun to mobilise; and Prussia, 
presuming that Servia might thus be rescued, 
declared war. 

Between these two ends of fact, the ulti- 
matum to Servia, the ultimatum to Belgium, 
any one so inclined can of course talk as if 



THE FACTS OF THE CASE 7 

everything were relative. If any one ask 
why the Czar should rush to the support of 
Servia, it is as easy to ask why the Kaiser 
should rush to the support of Austria. If 
any one say that the French would attack the 
Germans, it is sufficient to answer that the 
Germans did attack the French. There re- 
main, however, two attitudes to consider, 
even perhaps two arguments to counter, 
which can best be considered and countered 
under this general head of facts. First of 
all, there is a curious, cloudy sort of argu^ 
ment, much affected by the professional rhet- 
oricians of Prussia, who are sent out to in- 
struct and correct the minds of Americans or 
Scandinavians. It consists of going into 
convulsions of incredulity and scorn at the 
mention of Russia's responsibility for Servia 
or England's responsibility for Belgium; and 
suggesting that, treaty or no treaty, frontier 
or no frontier, Russia would be out to slay 



8 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

Teutons or England to steal colonies. Here, 
as elsewhere, I think the professors dotted all 
over the Baltic plain fail in lucidity, and in 
the power of distinguishing ideas. Of course 
it is quite true that England has material in- 
terests to defend, and will probably use the 
opportunity to defend them: or, in other 
words, of course England, like everybody 
else, would be more comfortable if Prussia 
were less predominant. The fact remains 
that we did not do what the Germans did. 
We did not invade Holland to seize a naval 
and commercial advantage: and whether 
they say that we wished to do it in our greed, 
or feared to do it in our cowardice, the fact 
remains that we did not do it. Unless this 
common-sense principle be kept in view, I 
cannot conceive how any quarrel can possibly 
be judged. A contract may be made be- 
tween two persons solely for material advan- 
tage on each side : but the moral advantage is 



THE FACTS OF THE CASE 9 

still generally supposed to lie with the person 
who keeps the contract. Surely it cannot be 
dishonest to be honest — even if honesty is 
the best policy. Imagine the most complex 
maze of indirect motives; and still the man 
who keeps faith for money cannot possibly 
be worse than the man who breaks faith for 
money. It will be noted that this ultimate 
test applies in the same way to Servia as to 
Belgium and Britain. The Servians may not 
be a very peaceful people; but, on the oc- 
casion under discussion, it was certainly they 
who wanted peace. You may choose to 
think the Serb a sort of bom robber : but on 
this occasion it was certainly the Austrian 
who was trying to rob. Similarly, you may 
call England perfidious as a sort of historical 
summary; and declare your private belief 
that Mr. Asquith was vowed from infancy to 
the ruin of the German Empire, a Hannibal 
and hater of the eagles. But, when all is 



10 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

said, It is nonsense to call a man perfidious 
because he keeps his promise. It is absurd 
to complain of the sudden treachery of a 
business man in turning up punctually to 
his appointment: or the unfair shock given 
to a creditor by the debtor paying his debts. 
Lastly, there is an attitude not unknown 
in the crisis against which I should particu- 
larly like to protest. I should address my 
protest especially to those lovers and pur- 
suers of Peace who, ver}^ short-sightedly, 
have occasionally adopted it. I mean the 
attitude which is impatient of these prelimi- 
nary details about who did this or that, and 
whether it was right or wrong. They are 
satisfied with saying that an enormous calam- 
ity, called War, has been begun by some or 
all of us ; and should be ended by some or all 
of us. To these people this preliminary 
chapter about the precise happenings must 
appear not only dry (and it must of neces- 



THE FACTS OF THE CASE ii 

sity be the driest part of the task) but essen- 
tially needless and barren. I wish to tell 
these people that they are wrong; that they 
are wrong upon all principles of human jus- 
tice and historic continuity: but that they 
are specially and supremely wrong upon their 
own principles of arbitration and interna- 
tional peace. 

These sincere and high-minded peace-lov- 
ers are always telling us that citizens no 
longer settle their quarrels by private vio- 
lence ; and that nations should no longer set- 
tle theirs by public violence. They are al- 
ways telling us that we no longer fight duels ; 
and need no longer wage wars. In short, 
they perpetually base their peace proposals 
on the fact that an ordinary citizen no longer 
avenges himself with an axe. But how is 
he prevented from revenging himself with an 
axe*? If he hits his neighbour on the head 
with the kitchen chopper, what do we do^ 



12 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

Do we all join hands, like children playing 
Mulberry Bush, and say "We are all respon- 
sible for this; but let us hope it will not 
spread. Let us hope for the happy day 
when he shall leave off chopping at the man's 
head; and when nobody shall ever chop any- 
thing for ever and ever." Do we say "Let 
byegones be byegones; why go back to all 
the dull details with which the business be- 
gan; who can tell with what sinister motives 
the man was standing there within reach of 
the hatchet'?" We do not. We keep the 
peace in private life by asking for the facts 
of provocation, and the proper object of pun- 
ishment. We do go into the dull details; 
we do enquire into the origins; we do em- 
phatically enquire who it was that hit first. 
In short we do what I have done very briefly 
in this place. 

Given this, it is indeed true that behind 
these facts there are truths; truths of a ter- 



THE FACTS OF THE CASE 13 

rible, of a spiritual sort. In mere fact, the 
Germanic power has been wrong about Ser- 
via, wrong about Russia, wrong about Bel- 
gium, wrong about England, wrong about 
Italy. But there was a reason for its being 
wrong everywhere; and of that root reason, 
which has moved half the world against it, 
I shall speak later. For that is something 
too omnipresent to be proved, too indispu- 
table to be helped by detail. It is nothing 
less than the locating, after more than a hun- 
dred years of recriminations and wrong ex- 
planations, of the modern European evil : the 
finding of the fountain from which poison 
has flowed upon all the nations of the earth. 



I 

THE WAR ON THE WORD 

It will hardly be denied that there is one 
lingering doubt in many, who recognise un- 
avoidable self-defence in the instant parry of 
the English sword, and who have no great 
love for the sweeping sabre of Sadowa and 
Sedan. That doubt is the doubt whether 
Russia, as compared with Prussia, is suffi- 
ciently decent and democratic to be the ally 
of liberal and civilised powers. I take first, 
therefore, this matter of civilisation. 

It is vital in a discussion like this, that we 
should make sure we are going by meanings 
and not by mere words. It is not necessary 
in any argument to settle what a word means 
or ought to mean. But it is necessary in 
every argument to settle what we propose to 
mean by the word. So long as our opponent 
understands what is the thing of which we 

IS 



i6 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

are talking, it does not matter to the argu- 
ment whether the word is or is not the one he 
would have chosen. A soldier does not say 
"We were ordered to go to Mechlin; but I 
would rather go to Malines." He may dis- 
cuss the etymology and archaeology of the 
difference on the march; but the point is 
that he knows where to go. So long as we 
know what a given word is to mean in a 
given discussion, it does not even matter if it 
means something else in some other and quite 
distinct discussion. We have a perfect right 
to say that the width of a window comes to 
four feet; even if we instantly and cheerfully 
change the subject to the larger mammals; 
and say that an elephant has four feet. The 
identity of the words does not matter, be- 
cause there is no doubt at all about the mean- 
ings; because nobody is likely to think of an 
elephant as four foot long, or of a window as 
having tusks and a curly trunk. 



THE WAR ON THE WORD 17 

It is essential* to emphasise this conscious- 
ness of the tiling under discussion in connec- 
tion with two or three words that are, as 
it were, the key-words of this war. One of 
them is the word "barbarian." The Prus- 
sians apply it to the Russians: the Russians 
apply it to the Prussians. Both, I think, 
really mean something that really exists, 
name or no name. Both mean different 
things. And if we ask what these different 
things are, we shall understand why Eng- 
land and France prefer Russia; and consider 
Prussia the really dangerous barbarian of the 
two. To begin with, it goes so much deeper 
even than atrocities; of which, in the past 
at least, all the three Empires of Central 
Europe have partaken pretty equally, as they 
partook of Poland. An English writer, seek- 
ing to avert the war by warnings against 
Russian influence, said that the flogged backs 
of Polish women stood between us and the 



i8 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

Alliance. But not long before, the flogging 
of women by an Austrian general led to that 
officer being thrashed in the streets of Lon- 
don by Barclay and Perkins' draymen. 
And as for the third power, the Prussians, 
it seems clear that they have treated Belgian 
women in a style compared with which flog- 
ging might be called an official formality. 
But, as I say, something much deeper than 
any such recrimination lies behind the use 
of the word on either side. When the Ger- 
man Emperor complains of our allying our- 
selves with a barbaric and half-oriental 
power he is not (I assure you) shedding 
tears over the grave of Kosciusko. And 
when I say (as I do most heartily) that the 
German Emperor is a barbarian, I am not 
merely expressing any prejudices I may have 
against the profanation of churches or of 
children. My countrymen and I mean a 
certain and intelligible thing when we call 



THE WAR ON THE WORD 19 

the Prussians barbarians. It is quite differ- 
ent from the thing attributed to Russians; 
and it could not possibly be attributed to 
Russians. It is very important that the 
neutral world should understand what this 
thing is. 

If the German calls the Russian barbarous 
he presumably means imperfectly civilised. 
There is a certain path along which Western 
nations have proceeded in recent times; and 
it is tenable that Russia has not proceeded so 
far as the others: that she has less of the 
special modern system in science, commerce, 
machinery, travel or political constitution. 
The Russ ploughs with an old plough; he 
wears a wild beard; he adores relics; his life 
is as rude and hard as that of a subject of 
Alfred the Great. Therefore he is, in the 
German sense, a barbarian. Poor fellows 
like Gorky and Dostoieffsky have to form 
their own reflections on the scenery, without 



20 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

the assistance of large quotations from Schil- 
ler on garden seats; or inscriptions directing 
them to pause and thank the All-Father for 
the finest view in Flesse-Pumpernickel. The 
Russians, having nothing but their faith, 
their fields, their great courage, and their 
self-governing communes, are quite cut off 
from what is called (in the fashionable street 
in Frankfort) The True, The Beautiful and 
The Good. There is a real sense in which 
one can call such backwardness barbaric; by 
comparison with the Kaiserstrasse ; and in 
that sense it is true of Russia. 

Now we, the French and English, do not 
mean this when we call the Prussians bar- 
barians. If their cities soared higher than 
their flying ships, if their trains travelled 
faster than their bullets, we should still call 
them barbarians. We should know exactly 
what we meant by it; and we should know 
that it is true. For we do not mean any- 



THE WAR ON THE WORD 21 

thing that is an imperfect civilisation by ac- 
cident. We mean something that is the 
enemy of civilisation by design. We mean 
something that is wilfully at war with the 
principles by which human society has been 
made possible hitherto. Of course it must 
be partly civilised even to destroy civilisa- 
tion. Such ruin could not be wrought by 
the savages that are merely undeveloped or 
inert. You could not have even Huns with- 
out horses; or horses without horsemanship. 
You could not have even Danish pirates with- 
out ships, or ships without seamanship. 
This person, whom I may call the Positive 
Barbarian, must be rather more superficially 
up-to-date than what I may call the Nega- 
tive Barbarian. Alaric was an officer in the 
Roman legions : but for all that he destroyed 
Rome. Nobody supposes that Eskimos 
could have done it at all neatly. But (in 
our meaning) barbarism is not a matter of 



22 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

methods but of aims. We say that these 
veneered vandals have the perfectly serious 
aim of destroying certain ideas which, as 
they think, the world has outgrown; without 
which, as we think, the world will die. 

It is essential that this perilous peculiarity 
in the Pruss, or Positive Barbarian, should be 
seized. He has what he fancies is a new 
idea; and he is going to apply it to every- 
body. As a fact it is simply a false general- 
isation; but he is really trying to make it 
general. This does not apply to the Nega- 
tive Barbarian : it does not apply to the Rus- 
sian or the Servian, even if they are bar- 
barians. If a Russian peasant does beat his 
wife, he does it because his fathers did it 
before him: he is likely to beat less rather 
than more as the past fades away. He does 
not think, as the Prussian would, that he has 
made a new discovery in physiology in find- 
ing that a woman is weaker than a man. 



THE WAR ON THE WORD 23 

If a Servian does knife his rival without a 
word, he does it because other Servians have 
done it. He may regard it even as piety, but 
certainly not as progress. He does not 
think, as the Prussian does, that he founds 
a new school of horology by starting be- 
fore the word "Go." He does not think he 
is in advance of the world in militarism, 
merely because he is behind it in morals. 
No; the danger of the Pruss is that he is 
prepared to fight for old errors as if they were 
new truths. He has somehow heard of cer- 
tain shallow simplifications; and imagines 
that we have never heard of them. And, 
as I have said, his limited but very sincere 
lunacy concentrates chiefly in a desire to de- 
stroy two ideas, the twin root ideas of ra- 
tional society. The first is the idea of record 
and promise: the second is the idea of reci- 
procity. 

It is plain that the promise, or extension 



24 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

of responsibility through time, is what chiefly 
distinguishes us, I will not say from savages, 
but from brutes and reptiles. This was 
noted by the shrewdness of the Old Testa- 
ment, when it summed up the dark irrespon- 
sible enormity of Leviathan in the words 
"Will he make a pact with thee?" The 
promise, like the wheel, is unknown in Na- 
ture: and is the first mark of man. Refer- 
ring only to human civilisation it may be 
said with seriousness, that in the beginning 
was the Word. The vow is to the man what 
the song is to the bird, or the bark to the 
dog; his voice, whereby he is known. Just 
as a man who cannot keep an appointment 
is not fit even to fight a duel, so the man who 
cannot keep an appointment with himself is 
not sane enough even for suicide. It is not 
easy to mention anything on which the enor- 
mous apparatus of human life can be said 
to depend. But if it depends on anything, 



THE WAR ON THE WORD 25 

it IS on this frail cord, flung from the for- 
gotten hills of yesterday to the invisible 
mountains of to-morrow. On that solitary 
string han,gs everything from Armageddon to 
an almanac, from a successful revolution to 
a return ticket. On that solitary string the 
Barbarian is hacking heavily, with a sabre 
which is fortunately blunt. 

Any one can see this well enough, merely 
by reading the last negotiations between 
London and Berlin. The Prussians had 
made a new discoveiy in international poli- 
tics : that it may often be convenient to make 
a promise; and yet curiously inconvenient to 
keep it. They were charmed, in their simple 
way, with this scientific discovery, and de- 
sired to communicate it to the world. They 
therefore promised England a promise, on 
condition that she broke a promise, and on 
the implied condition that the new promise 
might be broken as easily as the old one. To 



26 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

the profound astonishment of Prussia, this 
reasonable offer was refused ! I believe that 
the astonishment of Prussia was quite sin- 
cere. That is what I mean when I say that 
the Barbarian is trying to cut away that cord 
of honesty and clear record, on which hangs 
all that men have made. 

The friends of the German cause have 
complained that Asiatics and Africans upon 
the very verge of savagery have been brought 
against them from India and Algiers. And, 
in ordinary circumstances, I should sympa- 
thise with such a complaint made by a 
European people. But the circumstances are 
not ordinary. Here, again, the quite unique 
barbarism of Prussia goes deeper than what 
we call barbarities. About mere barbarities, 
it is true, the Turco and the Sikh would have 
a very good reply to the superior Teuton. 
The general and just reason for not using 
non-European tribes against Europeans is 



THE WAR ON THE WORD 27 

that given by Chatham against the use of 
the Red Indian: that such allies might do 
very diabolical things. But the poor Turco 
might not unreasonably ask, after a week- 
end in Belgium, what more diabolical things 
he could do than the highly cultured Ger- 
mans were doing themselves. Nevertheless, 
as I say, the justification of any extra-Eu- 
ropean aid goes deeper than any such details. 
It rests upon the fact that even other civilisa- 
tions, even much lower civilisations, even re- 
mote and repulsive civilisations, depend as 
much as our own on this primary principle 
on which the super-morality of Potsdam de- 
clares open War. Even savages promise 
things; and respect those who keep their 
promises. Even Orientals write things 
down : and though they write them from right 
to left, they know the importance of a scrap 
of paper. Many merchants will tell you 
that the word of the sinister and almost un- 



28 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

human Chinaman is often as good as his 
bond : and it was amid palm trees and Syrian 
pavilions that the great utterance opened the 
tabernacle, to him that sweareth to his hurt 
and changeth not. There is doubtless a 
dense labyrinth of duplicity in the East, and 
perhaps more guile in the individual Asiatic 
than in the individual German. But we are 
not talking of the violations of human mo- 
rality in various parts of the world. We are 
talking about a new and inhuman morality, 
which denies altogether the day of obligation. 
The Prussians have been told by their liter- 
ary men that everything depends upon 
Mood: and by their politicians that all ar- 
rangements dissolve before "necessity." 
That is the importance of the German Chan- 
cellor's phrase. He did not allege some 
special excuse in the case of Belgium, which 
might make it seem an exception that proved 
the rule. He distinctly argued, as on a prin- 



THE WAR ON THE WORD 29 

ciple applicable to other cases, that victory- 
was a necessity and honour was a scrap of 
paper. And it is evident that the half-edu- 
cated Prussian imagination really cannot get 
any further than this. It cannot see that if 
everybody's action were entirely incalculable 
from hour to hour, it would not only be the 
end of all promises, but the end of all proj- 
ects. In not being able to see that, the Ber- 
lin philosopher is really on a lower mental 
level than the Arab who respects the salt, or 
the Brahmin who preserves the caste. And 
in this quarrel we have a right to come with 
scimitars as well as sabres, with bows as well 
as rifles, with assegai and tomahawk and 
boomerang, because there is in all these at 
least a seed of civilisation that these intel- 
lectual anarchists would kill. And if they 
should find us in our last stand girt with such 
strange swords and following unfamiliar en- 
signs, and ask us for what we fight in so 



30 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

singular a company, we shall know what to 
reply: "We fight for the trust and for the 
tryst; for fixed memories and the possible 
meeting of men ; for all that makes life any- 
thing but an uncontrollable nightmare. We 
fight for the long arm of honour and remem- 
brance ; for all that can lift a man above the 
quicksands of his moods, and give him the 
mastery of time," 



II 

THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 

In the last summary I suggested that Bar- 
barism, as we mean it, is not mere ignorance 
or even mere cruelty. It has a more precise 
sense, and means militant hostility to certain 
necessary human ideas. I took the case of 
the vow or the contract, which Prussian in- 
tellectualism would destroy. I urged that 
the Prussian is a spiritual Barbarian, because 
he is not bound by his own past, any more 
than a man in a dream. He avows that 
when he promised to respect a frontier on 
Monday, he did not foresee what he calls 
"the necessity" of not respecting it on Tues- 
day. In short, he is like a child, who at the 
end of all reasonable explanations and re- 
minders of admitted arrangements, has no 
answer except "But I want to." 

31 



32 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

There is another idea in human arrange- 
ments so fundamental as to be forgotten ; but 
now for the first time denied. It may be 
called the idea of reciprocity; or, in better 
English, of give and take. The Prussian 
appears to be quite intellectually incapable 
of this thought. He cannot, I think, con- 
ceive the idea that is the foundation of all 
comedy; that, in the eyes of the other man, 
he is only the other man. And if we carry 
this clue through the institutions of Prussian- 
ised Germany, we shall find how curiously 
his mind has been limited in the matter. 
The German differs from other patriots in 
the inability to understand patriotism. Other 
European peoples pity the Poles or the Welsh 
for their violated borders; but Germans pity 
only themselves. They might take forcible 
possession of the Severn or the Danube, of 
the Thames or the Tiber, of the Garry or the 
Garonne — and they would still be singing 



THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 33 

sadly about how fast and true stands the 
watch on Rhine; and what a shame it would 
be if any one took their own little river away 
from them. That is what I mean by not be- 
ing reciprocal: and you will find it in all 
that they do: as in all that is done by sav- 
ages. 

Here, again, it is very necessary to avoid 
confusing this soul of the savage with mere 
savagery in the sense of brutality or butch- 
ery; in which the Greeks, the French and all 
the most civilised nations have indulged in 
hours of abnormal panic or revenge. Ac- 
cusations of cruelty are generally mutual. 
But it is the point about the Prussian that 
with him nothing is mutual. The defini- 
tion of the true savage does not concern it- 
self even with how much more he hurts 
strangers or captives than do the other tribes 
of men. The definition of the true savage is 
that he laughs when he hurts you ; and howls 



34 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

when you hurt him. This extraordinan- in- 
equality in the mind is in every act and word 
that comes from Berlin. For instance, no 
man of the world believes all he sees in the 
newspapers; and no journalist believes a 
quarter of it. We should, therefore, be 
quite ready in the ordinary way to take a 
great deal off the tales of German atrocities; 
to doubt this story or deny that. But there 
is one thing that we cannot doubt or deny: 
the seal and authority of the Emperor. In 
the Imperial proclamation the fact that cer- 
tain "frightful" things have been done is 
admitted; and justified on the ground of 
their frightfulness. It was a military ne- 
cessity to terrify the peaceful populations 
with something that was not civilised, some- 
thing that was hardly human. Very well. 
That is an intelligible policy: and in that 
sense an intelligible argument. An army en- 
dangered by foreigners may do the most 



THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 35 

frightful things. But then we turn the next 
page of the Kaiser's public diary, and we 
find him writing to the President of the 
United States, to complain that the English 
are using Dum-dum bullets and violating 
various regulations of the Hague Conference. 
I pass for the present the question of whether 
there is a word of truth in these charges. I 
am content to gaze rapturously at the blink- 
ing eyes of the True, or Positive, Barbarian. 
I suppose he would be quite puzzled if we 
said that violating the Hague Conference 
was "a military necessity" to us; or that the 
rules of the Conference were only a scrap of 
paper. He would be quite pained if we said 
that Dum-dum bullets, "by their very fright- 
fulness," would be very useful to keep con- 
quered Germans in order. Do what he will, 
he cannot get outside the idea that he, be- 
cause he is he and not you, is free to break 
the law; and also to appeal to the law. It 



36 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

is said that the Prussian officers play at a 
game called Kriegsspiel, or the War Game. 
But in truth they could not play at any game ; 
for the essence of every game is that the rules 
are the same on both sides. 

But taking every German institution in 
turn, the case is the same; and it is not a 
case of mere bloodshed or military bravado. 
The duel, for example, can legitimately be 
called a barbaric thing; but the word is here 
used in another sense. There are duels in 
Germany; but so there are in France, Italy, 
Belgium, and Spain; indeed, there are duels 
wherever there are dentists, newspapers, 
Turkish baths, time-tables, and all the curses 
of civilisation; except in England and a cor- 
ner of America. You may happen to regard 
the duel as a historic relic of the more bar- 
baric States on which these modern States' 
were built. It might equally well be main- 
tained that the duel is everywhere the sign 



THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 37 

of high civilisation; being the sign of its more 
delicate sense of honour, its more vulnerable 
vanity, or its greater dread of social dis- 
repute. But whichever of the two views 
you take, you must concede that the essence 
of the duel is an armed equality. I should 
not, therefore, apply the word barbaric, as 
I am using it, to the duels of German officers, 
or even to the broadsword combats that are 
conventional among the German students. I 
do not see why a young Prussian should not 
have scars all over his face if he likes them; 
nay, they are often the redeeming points of 
interest on an otherwise somewhat unenlight- 
ening countenance. The duel may be de- 
fended; the sham duel may be defended. 

What cannot be defended is something 
really peculiar to Prussia, of which we hear 
numberless stories, some of them certainly 
true. It might be called the one-sided duel. 
I mean the idea that there is some sort of dig- 



38 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

nity in drawing the sword upon a man who 
has not got a sword; a waiter, or a shop as- 
sistant, or even a schoolboy. One of the 
officers of the Kaiser in the affair at Sa- 
berne was found industriously hacking at a 
cripple. In all these matters I would avoid 
sentiment. We must not lose our tempers 
at the mere cruelty of the thing; but pursue 
the strict psychological distinction. Others 
besides German soldiers have slain the de- 
fenceless, for loot or lust or private malice, 
like any other murderer. The point is that 
nowhere else but in Prussian Germany is any 
theory of honour mixed up with such things ; 
any more than with poisoning or picking 
pockets. No French, English, Italian or 
American gentleman would think he had in 
some way cleared his own character by stick- 
ing his sabre through some ridiculous green- 
grocer who had nothing in his hand but a 
cucumber. It would seem as if the word 



THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 39 

which is translated from the German as 
"honour" must really mean something quite 
different in German. It seems to mean 
something more like what we should call 
"prestige." 

The fundamental fact, however, is the ab- 
sence of the reciprocal idea. The Prussian 
is not sufficiently civilised for the duel. 
Even when he crosses swords with us his 
thoughts are not as our thoughts; when we 
both glorify war, we are glorifying different 
things. Our medals are wrought like his, 
but they do not mean the same thing; our 
regiments are cheered as his are, but the 
thought in the heart is not the same; the 
Iron Cross is on the bosom of his king, but 
it is not the sign of our God. For we, alas, 
follow our God with many relapses and self- 
contradictions, but he follows his very con- 
sistently. Through all the things that we 
have examined, the view of national bound- 



40 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

aries, the view of military methods, the 
view of personal honour and self-defence, 
there runs in their case something of an 
atrocious simplicity; something too simple 
for us to understand: the idea that glory 
consists in holding the steel, and not in fac- 
ing it. 

If further examples were necessary, it 
would be easy to give hundreds of them. 
Let us leave, for the moment, the relation 
between man and man in the thing called 
the duel. Let us take the relation between 
man and woman, in that immortal duel 
which we call a marriage. Here again we 
shall find that other Christian civilisations 
aim at some kind of equality; even if the 
balance be irrational or dangerous. Thus, 
the two extremes of the treatment of women 
might be represented by what are called the 
respectable classes in America and in France. 
In America they choose the risk of comrade- 



THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 41 

ship ; in France the compensation of courtesy. 
In America it is practically possible for any 
young gentleman to take any young lady for 
what he calls ( I deeply regret to say) a joy- 
ride; but at least the man goes with the 
woman as much as the woman with the man. 
In France the young woman is protected like 
a nun while she is unmarried; but when she 
is a mother she is really a holy woman; and 
when she is a grandmother she is a holy ter- 
ror. By both extremes the woman gets 
something back out of life. There is only 
one place where she gets little or nothing 
back; and that is the north of Germany. 
France and America aim alike at equality; 
America by similarity; France by dissimilar- 
ity. But North Germany does definitely 
aim at inequality. The woman stands up, 
with no more irritation than a butler; the 
man sits down, with no more embarrassment 
than a guest. This is the cool affirmation 



42 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

of inferiority, as in the case of the sabre and 
the tradesman. "Thou goest with women; 
forget not thy whip," said Nietzsche. It 
will be observed that he does not say 
"poker"; which might come more naturally 
to the mind of a more common or Christian 
wife-beater. But then a poker is a part of 
domesticity; and might be used by the wife 
as well as the husband. In fact, it often is. 
The sword and the whip are the weapons 
of a privileged caste. 

Pass from the closest of all differences, 
that between husband and wife, to the most 
distant of all differences, that of the remote 
and unrelated races who have seldom seen 
each other's faces, and never been tinged 
with each other's blood. Here we still find 
the same unvarying Prussian principle. 
Any European might feel a genuine fear of 
the Yellow Peril; and many Englishmen, 
Frenchmen, and Russians have felt and ex- 



THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 43 

pressed it. Many might say, and have said, 
that the Heathen Chinee is very heathen in- 
deed; that if he ever advances against us he 
will trample and torture and utterly destroy, 
in a way that Eastern people do, but West- 
em people do not. Nor do I doubt the Ger- 
man Emperor's sincerity when he sought to 
point out to us how abnormal and abomi- 
nable such a nightmare campaign would be, 
supposing that it could ever come. But now 
comes the comic irony; which never fails 
to follow on the attempt of the Prussian to 
be philosophic. For the Kaiser, after ex- 
plaining to his troops how important it was 
to avoid Eastern Barbarism, instantly com- 
manded them to become Eastern Barbarians. 
He told them, in so many words, to be Huns : 
and leave nothing living or standing be- 
hind them. In fact, he frankly offered a 
new army corps of aboriginal Tartars to the 
Far East, within such time as it may take a 



44 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

bewildered Hanoverian to turn into a Tar- 
tar. Any one who has the painful habit of 
personal thought, will perceive here at once 
the non-reciprocal principle again. Boiled 
down to its bones of logic, it means simply 
this : "I am a German and you are a China- 
man. Therefore I, being a German, have 
a right to be a Chinaman. But you have no 
right to be a Chinaman; because you are only 
a Chinaman." This is probably the highest 
point to which the German culture has 
risen. 

The principle here neglected, which may 
be called Mutuality by those who misunder- 
stand and dislike the word Equality, does 
not offer so clear a distinction between the 
Prussian and the other peoples as did the 
first Prussian principle of an infinite and 
destructive opportunism; or, in other words, 
the principle of being unprincipled. Nor 
upon this second can one take up so obvious 



THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 45 

a position touching the other civilisations or 
semi-civilisations of the world. Some idea 
of oath and bond there is in the rudest tribes, 
in the darkest continents. But it might be 
maintained, of the more delicate and imagi- 
native element of reciprocity, that a cannibal 
in Borneo understands it almost as little as 
a professor in Berlin. A narrow and one- 
sided seriousness is the fault of barbarians 
all over the world. This may have been the 
meaning, for aught I know, of the one eye of 
the Cyclops: that the Barbarian cannot see 
round things or look at them from two points 
of view; and thus becomes a blind beast and 
an eater of men. Certainly there can be no 
better summary of the savage than this, 
which as we have seen, unfits him for the 
duel. He is the man who cannot love — 
no, nor even hate — his neighbour as himself. 
But this quality in Prussia does have one 
effect which has reference to the same ques- 



46 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

tion of the lower civilisations. It disposes 
once and for all at least of the civilising 
mission of Germany. Evidently the Ger- 
mans are the last people in the world to be 
trusted with the task. They are as short- 
sighted morally as physically. What is 
their sophism of "necessity" but an inability 
to imagine to-niorrow morning^ What is 
their non-reciprocity but an inability to im- 
agine, not a god or devil, but merely another 
man? Are these to judge mankind? Men 
of two tribes in Africa not only know that 
they are all men, but can understand that 
they are all black men. In this they are 
quite seriously in advance of the intellectual 
Prussian; who cannot be got to see that we 
are all white men. The ordinary eye is un- 
able to perceive in the North-East Teuton 
anything that marks him out especially 
from the more colourless classes of the rest 
of Aryan mankind. He is simply a white 



THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 47 

man, with a tendency to the grey or the drab. 
Yet he will explain, in serious official docu- 
ments, that the difference between him and 
us is a difference between "the master-race 
and the inferior-race." The collapse of 
German philosophy always occurs at the be- 
ginning rather than the end of an argument; 
and the difficulty here is that there is no way 
of testing which is a master-race except by 
asking which is your own race. If you can- 
not find out (as is usually the case) you fall 
back on the absurd occupation of writing 
history about pre-historic times. But I 
suggest quite seriously that if the Germans 
can give their philosophy to the Hottentots, 
there is no reason why they should not give 
their sense of superiority to the Hottentots. 
If they can see such fine shades between the 
Goth and the Gaul, there is no reason why 
similar shades should not lift the savage 
above other savages; why any Ojibway 



48 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

should not discover that he is one tint redder 
than the Dacotahs; or any nigger in the 
Cameroons say he is not so black as he is 
painted. For this principle of a quite un- 
proved racial supremacy is the last and worst 
of the refusals of reciprocity. The Prus- 
sian calls all men to admire the beauty of his 
large blue eyes. If they do, it is because 
they have inferior eyes: if they don't, it is 
because they have no eyes. 

Wherever the most miserable remnant of 
our race, astray and dried up in deserts, or 
buried forever under the fall of bad civili- 
sations, has some feeble memory that men 
are men, that bargains are bargains, that 
there are two sides to a question, or even 
that it takes two to make a quarrel — that 
remnant has the right to resist the New Cul- 
ture, to the knife and club and the splintered 
stone. For the Prussian begins all his cul- 
ture by that act which is the destruction of 



THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY 49 

all creative thought and constructive action. 
He breaks that mirror in the mind, in which 
a man can see the face of his friend or foe. 



Ill 

THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

The German Emperor has reproached this 
country with allying itself with "barbaric 
and semi-oriental power." We have already 
considered in what sense we use the word 
barbaric : it is in the sense of one who is hos- 
tile to civilisation, not one who is insufficient 
in it. But when we pass from the idea of 
the barbaric to the idea of the oriental, the 
case is even more curious. There is nothing 
particularly Tartar in Russian affairs, ex- 
cept the fact that Russia expelled the Tar- 
tars. The Eastern invader occupied and 
crushed the country for many years ; but that 
is equally true of Greece, of Spain and even 
of Austria. If Russia has suffered from the 
East she has suffered in order to resist it: 
and it is rather hard that the very miracle 

50 



THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 51 

of her escape should make a mystery about 
her origin. Jonah may or may not have 
been three days inside a fish, but that does 
not make him a merman. And in all the 
other cases of European nations who escaped 
the monstrous captivity, we do admit the 
purity and continuity of the European type. 
We consider the old Eastern rule as a wound, 
but not as a stain. Copper-coloured men out 
of Africa overruled for centuries the religion 
and patriotism of Spaniards. Yet I have 
never heard that Don Ouixote was an Afri- 
can fable on the lines of Uncle Remus. I 
have never heard that the heavy black in the 
pictures of Velasquez was due to a negro an- 
cestry. In the case of Spain, which is close 
to us, we can recognise the resurrection of a 
Christian and cultured nation after its age 
of bondage. But Russia is rather remote; 
and those to whom nations are but names in 
newspapers can really fancy, like Mr. Bar- 



52 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

ing's friend, that all Russian churches are 
"mosques." ,Yet the land of Turgenev is 
not a wilderness of fakirs; and even the fa- 
natical Russian is as proud of being different 
from the Mongol, as the fanatical Spaniard 
was proud of being different from the Moor. 
The town of Reading, as it exists, offers 
few opportunities for piracy on the high 
seas: yet it was the camp of the pirates in 
Alfred's day. I should think it hard to call 
the people of Berkshire half-Danish, merely 
because they drove out the Danes. In short, 
some temporary submergence under the sav- 
age flood was the fate of many of the most 
civilised states of Christendom; and it is 
quite ridiculous to argue that Russia, which 
wrestled hardest, must have recovered least. 
Everywhere, doubtless, the East spread a 
sort of enamel over the conquered countries, 
but everywhere the enamel cracked. Actual 
history, in fact, is exactly opposite to the 



THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 53 

cheap proverb invented against the Musco- 
vite. It is not true to say "Scratch a Rus- 
sian and you find a Tartar." In the darkest 
hour of the barbaric dominion it was truer to 
say, "Scratch a Tartar and you find a Rus- 
sian." It was the civilisation that survived 
under all the barbarism. This vital ro- 
mance of Russia, this revolution against 
Asia, can be proved in pure fact: not only 
from the almost superhuman activity of 
Russia during the struggle, but also (which 
is much rarer as human history goes) by her 
quite consistent conduct since. She is the 
only great nation which has really expelled 
the Mongol from her country, and continued 
to protest against the presence of the Mon- 
gol in her continent. Knowing what he had 
been in Russia, she knew what he would be 
in Europe. In this she pursued a logical 
line of thought which was, if anything, too 
unsympathetic with the energies and reli- 



54 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

gions of the East. Every other country, one 
may say, has been an ally of the Turk; that 
is, of the Mongol and the Moslem. The 
French played them as pieces against Aus- 
tria; the English warmly supported them un- 
der the Palmerston regime; even the young 
Italians sent troops to the Crimea; and of 
Prussia and her Austrian vassal it is nowa- 
days needless to speak. For good or evil, it 
is the fact of history that Russia is the only 
Power in Europe that has never supported 
the Crescent against the Cross. 

That, doubtless, will appear an unimpor- 
tant matter; but it may become important 
under certain peculiar conditions. Suppose, 
for the sake of argument, that there were a 
powerful prince in Europe who had gone os- 
tentatiously out of his way to pay reverence 
to the remains of the Tartar, Mongol and 
Moslem, left as an outpost in Europe. Sup- 
pose there were a Christian Emperor who 



THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY ss 

could not even go to the tomb of the Cruci- 
fied, without pausing to congratulate the last 
and living crucifier. If there were an Em- 
peror who gave guns and guides and maps 
and drill instructors to defend the remains 
of the Mongol in Christendom, what should 
we say to him? I think at least we might 
ask him what he meant by his impudence, 
when he talked about supporting a semi- 
oriental power. That we support a semi- 
oriental power, we deny. That he has sup- 
ported an entirely oriental power cannot be 
denied — ^no, not even by the man who did 
it. 

But here is to be noted the essential differ- 
ence between Russia and Prussia; especially 
by those who use the ordinary Liberal ar- 
guments against the latter. Russia has a 
policy which she pursues, if you will, through 
evil and good; but at least so as to produce 
good as well as evil. Let it be granted that 



56 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

the policy has made her oppressive to the 
Finns and the Poles — though the Russian 
Poles feel far less oppressed than do the 
Prussian Poles. But it is a mere historic 
fact, that if Russia has been a despot to some 
small nations, she has been a deliverer to 
others. She did, so far as in her lay, eman- 
cipate the Servians or the Montenegrins. 
But whom did Prussia ever emancipate — 
even by accident? It is indeed somewhat 
extraordinary that in the perpetual permuta- 
tions of international politics the Hohenzol- 
lerns have never gone astray into the path of 
enlightenment. They have been in alliance 
with almost everybody off and on; with 
France, with England, with Austria, with 
Russia. Can any one candidly say that they 
have left on any one of these people the 
faintest impress of progress or liberation *? 
Prussia was the enemy of the French Mon- 
archy; but a worse enemy of the French 



THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 57 

Revolution. Prussia had been an enemy of 
the Czar; but she was a worse enemy of the 
Duma. Prussia totally disregarded Aus- 
trian rights; but she is to-day quite ready to 
inflict Austrian wrongs. This is the strong 
particular difference between the one empire 
and the other. Russia is pursuing certain 
intelligible and sincere ends, which to her at 
least are ideals, and for which, therefore, she 
will make sacrifices and will protect the 
weak. But the North German soldier is a 
sort of abstract tyrant, everywhere and al- 
ways on the side of materialistic tyranny. 
This Teuton in uniform has been found in 
strange places; shooting farmers before Sara- 
toga and flogging soldiers in Surrey, hanging 
niggers in Africa and raping girls in Wick- 
low; but never, by some mysterious fatality, 
lending a hand to the freeing of a single city 
or the independence of one solitary flag. 
Wherever scorn and prosperous oppression 



58 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

are, there is the Prussian; unconsciously con- 
sistent, instinctively restrictive, innocently 
evil; "following darkness like a dream." 

Suppose we heard of a person (gifted with 
some longevity) who had helped Alva to 
persecute Dutch Protestants, then helped 
Cromwell to persecute Irish Catholics, and 
then helped Claverhouse to persecute Scotch 
Puritans, we should find it rather easier to 
call him a persecutor than to call him a 
Protestant or a Catholic. Curiously enough 
this is actually the position in which the Prus- 
sian stands in Europe. No argument can 
alter the fact that in three converging and 
conclusive cases he has been on the side of 
three distinct rulers of different religions, 
who had nothing whatever in common except 
that they were ruling oppressively. In 
these three Governments, taken separately, 
one can see something excusable or at least 
human. When the Kaiser encouraged the 



THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 59 

Russian rulers to crush the Revolution, the 
Russian rulers undoubtedly believed they 
were wrestling with an inferno of atheism 
and anarchy. A Socialist of the ordinary 
English kind cried out upon me when I spoke 
of Stolypin, and said he was chiefly known 
by the halter called "Stolypin's Necktie." 
As a fact, there were many other things in- 
teresting about Stolypin besides his necktie: 
his policy of peasant proprietorship, his ex- 
traordinary personal courage, and certainly 
none more interesting than that movement 
in his death agony, when he made the sign of 
the cross towards the Czar, as the crown and 
captain of his Christianity. But the Kaiser 
does not regard the Czar as the captain of 
Christianity. Far from it. What he sup- 
ported in Stolypin was the necktie and noth- 
ing but the necktie : the gallows and not the 
cross. The Russian ruler did believe that 
the Orthodox Church was orthodox. The 



6o THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

Austrian Archduke did really desire to make 
the Catholic Church catholic. He did 
really believe that he was being Pro-Catholic 
in being Pro-Austrian. But the Kaiser can- 
not be Pro-Catholic, and therefore cannot 
have been really Pro-Austrian, he was simply 
and solely Anti-Servian. Nay, even in the 
cruel and sterile strength of Turkey, any one 
with imagination can see something of the 
tragedy and therefore of the tenderness of 
true belief. The worst that can be said of 
the Moslems is, as the poet put it, they of- 
fered to man the choice of the Koran or the 
sword. The best that can be said for the 
German is that he does not care about the 
Koran, but is satisfied if he can have the 
sword. And for me, I confess, even the sins 
of these three other striving empires take on, 
in comparison, something that is sorrowful 
and dignified : and I feel they do not deserve 
that this little Lutheran lounger should pat- 



THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 61 

ronise all that is evil in them, while ignoring 
all that is good. He is not Catholic, he is 
not Orthodox, he is not Mahomedan. He 
is merely an old gentleman who wishes to 
share the crime though he cannot share the 
creed. He desires to be a persecutor by the 
pang without the palm. So strongly do all 
the instincts of the Prussian drive against 
liberty, that he would rather oppress other 
people's subjects than think of anybody go- 
ing without the benefits of oppression. He 
is a sort of disinterested despot. He is as 
disinterested as the devil who is ready to do 
any one's dirty work. 

This would seem obviously fantastic were 
it not supported by solid facts which cannot 
be explained otherwise. Indeed it would be 
inconceivable if we were thinking of a whole 
people, consisting of free and varied indi- 
viduals. But in Prussia the governing class 
is really a governing class: and a very few 



62 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

people are needed to think along these lines 
to make all the other people act along them. 
And the paradox of Prussia is this: that 
while its princes and nobles have no other 
aim on this earth but to destroy democracy 
wherever it shows itself, they have contrived 
to get themselves trusted, not as wardens of 
the past but as forerunners of the future. 
Even they cannot believe that their theory is 
popular, but they do believe that it is pro- 
gressive. Here again we find the spiritual 
chasm between the two monarchies in ques- 
tion. The Russian institutions are, in many 
cases, really left in the rear of the Russian 
people, and many of the Russian people 
know it. But the Prussian institutions are 
supposed to be in advance of the Prussian 
people, and most of the Prussian people be- 
lieve it. It is thus m^uch easier for the war- 
lords to go everywhere and impose a hopeless 
slavery upon every one, for they have al- 



THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 63 

ready imposed a sort of hopeful slavery on 
their own simple race. 

And when men shall speak to us of the 
hoary iniquities of Russia and of how an- 
tiquated is the Russian system, we shall an- 
swer "Yes; that is the superiority of Rus- 
sia." Their institutions are part of their his- 
tory, whether as relics or fossils. Their 
abuses have really been uses: that is to say, 
they have been used up. If they have old 
engines of terror or torment, they may fall 
to pieces from mere rust, like an old coat of 
armour. But in the case of the Prussian tyr- 
anny, if it be tyranny at all, it is the whole 
point of its claim that it is not antiquated, 
but just going to begin, like the showman. 
Prussia has a whole thriving factory of 
thumbscrews, a whole humming workshop 
of wheels and racks, of the newest and neat- 
est pattern, with which to win back Europe 
to the Reaction . . . infandum renovare 



64 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

dolor em. And if we wish to test the truth 
of this, it can be done by the same method 
which showed us that Russia, if her race or 
religion could sometimes make her an in- 
vader and an oppressor, could also be made 
an emancipator and a knight errant. In the 
same way, if the Russian institutions are old- 
fashioned, they honestly exhibit the good as 
well as the bad that can be found in old- 
fashioned things. In their police system 
they have an inequality which is against our 
ideas of law. But in their commune system 
they have an equality that is older than law 
itself. Even when they flogged each other 
like barbarians, they called upon each other 
by their Christian names like children. At 
their worst they retained all the best of a 
rude society. At their best, they are simply 
good, like good children or good nuns. But 
in Prussia all that is best in the civilised 
machinery is put at the service of all that is 



THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 65 

worst in the barbaric mind. Here again 
the Prussian has no accidental merits, 
none of those lucky survivals, none of those 
late repentances, which make the patchwork 
glory of Russia. Here all is sharpened to a 
point and pointed to a purpose and that pur- 
pose, if words and acts have any meaning at 
all, is the destruction of liberty throughout 
the world. 



IV 

THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 

In considering the Prussian point of view 
we have been considering what seems to be 
mainly a mental limitation: a kind of knot 
in the brain. Towards the problem of Slav 
population, of English colonisation, of 
French armies and reinforcements, it shows 
the same strange philosophic sulks. So far 
as I can follow it, it seems to amount to say- 
ing "It is very wrong that you should be 
superior to me, because I am superior to 
you." The spokesmen of this system seem 
to have a curious capacity for concentrating 
this entanglement or contradiction, some- 
times into a single paragraph, or even a 
single sentence. I have already referred to 
the German Emperor's celebrated suggestion 
that in order to avert the peril of Hunnish- 



THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 67 

ness we should all become Huns. A much 
stronger instance is his more recent order to 
his troops touching the war in Northern 
France. As most people know, his words 
ran "It is m.y Royal and Imperial command 
that you concentrate your energies, for the 
immediate present, upon one single purpose, 
and that is that you address all your skill and 
all the valour of my soldiers to exterminate 
first the treacherous English and to walk 
over General French's contemptible little 
Army." The rudeness of the remark an 
Englishman can afford to pass over; what I 
am interested in is the mentality; the train 
of thought that can manage to entangle it- 
self even in so brief a space. If French's 
little Army is contemptible, it would seem 
clear that all the skill and valour of the Ger- 
man Army had better not be concentrated on 
it, but on the larger and less contemptible al- 
lies. If all the skill and valour of the Ger- 



68 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

man Army are concentrated on it, it is not 
being treated as contemptible. But the 
Prussian rhetorician had two incompatible 
sentiments in his mind; and he insisted on 
saying them both at once. He wanted to 
think of an English Army as a small thing; 
but he also wanted to think of an English 
defeat as a big thing. He wanted to exult, 
at the same moment, in the utter weakness 
of the British in their attack; and the su- 
preme skill and valour of the Germans in 
repelling such an attack. Somehow it must 
be made a common and obvious collapse for 
England; and yet a daring and unexpected 
triumph for Germany. In trying to express 
these contradictory conceptions simulta- 
neously, he got rather mixed. Therefore he 
bade Germania fill all her vales and moun- 
tains with the dying agonies of this almost 
invisible earwig; and let the impure blood of 



THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 69 

this cockroach redden the Rhine down to the 
sea. 

But it would be unfair to base the criti- 
cism on the utterance of any accidental and 
hereditary prince: and it is quite equally 
clear in the case of the philosophers who 
have been held up to us, even in England, as 
the very prophets of progress. And in noth- 
ing is it shown more sharply than in the curi- 
ous confused talk about Race and especially 
about the Teutonic Race. Professor Har- 
nack and similar people are reproaching us, 
I understand, for having broken "the bond 
of Teutonism" : a bond which the Prussians 
have strictly observed both in breach and ob- 
servance. We note it in their open annexa- 
tion of lands wholly inhabited by negroes, 
such as Denmark. We note it equally in 
their instant and joyful recognition of the 
flaxen hair and light blue eyes of the Turks. 



70 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

But it is still the abstract principle of Pro- 
fessor Harnack which interests me most ; and 
in following it I have the same complexity 
of enquiry, but the same simplicity of result. 
Comparing the Professor's concern about 
"Teutonism" with his unconcern about Bel- 
gium, I can only reach the following result: 
"A man need not keep a promise he has made. 
But a man must keep a promise he has not 
made." There certainly was a treaty bind- 
ing Britain to Belgium ; if it was only a scrap 
of papfer. If there was any treaty binding 
Britain to Teutonism it is, to say the least 
of it, a lost scrap of paper : almost what one 
might call a scrap of waste-paper. Here 
again the pendants under consideration ex- 
hibit the illogical perversity that makes the 
brain reel. There is obligation and there is 
no obligation: sometimes it appears that 
Germany and England must keep faith with 
each other; sometimes that Germany need 



THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 71 

not keep faith with anybody and anything; 
sometimes that we alone among European 
peoples are almost entitled to be Germans; 
sometimes that beside us Russians and 
Frenchmen almost rise to a Germanic love- 
liness of character. But through all there is, 
hazy but not hypocritical, this sense of some 
common Teutonism. 

Professor Haeckel, another of the wit- 
nesses raised up against us, attained to some 
celebrity at one time through proving the 
remarkable resemblance between two differ- 
ent things by printing duplicate pictures of 
the same thing. Professor HaeckePs con- 
tribution to biology, in this case, was exactly 
like Professor Harnack's contribution to 
ethnology. Professor Hamack knows what 
a German is like. When he wants to imag- 
ine what an Englishman is like, he simply 
photographs the same German over again. 
In both cases there is probably sincerity as 



72 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

well as simplicity. Haeckel was so certain 
that the species illustrated in emb)TO really 
are closely related and linked up, that it 
seemed to him a small thing to simplify it by 
mere repetition. Harnack is so certain that 
the German and Englishman are almost alike, 
that he really risks the generalisation that 
they are exactly alike. He photographs, so 
to speak, the same fair and foolish face twice 
over; and calls it a remarkable resemblance 
between cousins. Thus he can prove the ex- 
istence of Teutonism just about as conclu- 
sively as Haeckel has proved the more ten- 
able proposition of the non-existence of God. 
Now the German and the Englishman are 
not in the least alike — except in the sense 
that neither of them are negroes. They are, 
in everything good and evil, more unlike 
than any other two men we can take at ran- 
dom from the great European family. They 
are opposite from the roots of their history, 



THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 73 

nay, of their geography. It is an under- 
statement to call Britain insular. Britain 
is not only an island, but an island slashed 
by the sea till it nearly splits into three is- 
lands; and even the Midlands can almost 
smell the salt. Germany is a powerful, 
beautiful and fertile inland country, which 
can only find the sea by one or two twisted 
and narrow paths, as people find a subter- 
ranean lake. Thus the British Navy is 
really national because it is natural; it has 
co-hered out of hundreds of accidental ad- 
ventures of ships and shipmen before Chau- 
cer's time and after it. But the German 
Navy is an artificial thing; as artificial as a 
constructed Alp would be in England. Wil- 
liam 11 has simply copied the British Navy 
as Frederick II copied the French Army: 
and this Japanese or anti-like assiduity in 
imitation is one of the hundred qualities 
which the Germans have and the English 



74 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

markedly have not. There are other Ger- 
man superiorities which are very much su- 
perior. The one or two really jolly things 
that the Germans have got are precisely the 
things which the English haven't got: not- 
ably a real habit of popular music and of the 
ancient songs of the people, not merely 
spreading from the towns or caught from the 
professionals. In this the Germans rather 
resemble the Welsh: though heaven knows 
what becomes of Teutonism if they do. But 
the difference between the Germans and the 
English goes deeper than all these signs of 
it; they differ more than any other two 
Europeans in the normal posture of the mind. 
Above all, they differ in what is the most 
English of all English traits; that shame 
which the French may be* right in calling 
"the bad shame"; for it is certainly mixed 
up with pride and suspicion, the upshot of 
which we call shyness. Even an English- 



THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 75 

man's rudeness is often rooted in his being 
embarrassed. But a German's rudeness is 
rooted in his never being embarrassed. He 
eats and makes love noisily. He never feels 
a speech or a song or a sermon or a large 
meal to be what the English call "out of 
place" in particular circumstances. When 
Germans are patriotic and religious they 
have no re-actions against patriotism and 
religion as have the English and the French. 
Nay, the mistake of Germany in the modern 
disaster largely arose from the facts that she 
thought England Wcis simple when England 
is very subtle. She thought that because 
our politics have become largely financial 
that they had become wholly financial; that 
because our aristocrats had become pretty 
cynical that they had become entirely cor- 
rupt. They could not seize the subtlety by 
which a rather used-up English gentleman 
might sell a coronet when he would not sell 



76 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

a fortress; might lower the public standards 
and yet refuse to lower the flag. In short, 
the Germans are quite sure that they under- 
stand us entirely, because they do not un- 
derstand us at all. Possibly if they began 
to understand us they might hate us even 
more: but I would rather be hated for some 
small but real reason than pursued with love 
on account of all kinds of qualities which 
I do not possess and which I do not desire. 
And when the Germans get their first genuine 
glimpse of what modern England is like they 
will discover that England has a very broken, 
belated and inadequate sense of having an 
obligation to Europe, but no sort of sense 
whatever of having any obligation to Teu- 
tonism. 

This is the last and strongest of the 
Prussian qualities we have here considered. 
There is in stupidity of this sort a strange 
slippery strength : because it can be not only 



THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 77 

outside rules but outside reason. The man 
who really cannot see that he is contradicting 
himself has a great advantage in controversy; 
though the advantage breaks down when he 
tries to reduce it to simple addition, to chess, 
or to the game called war. It is the same 
about the stupidity of the one-sided kinship. 
The drunkard who is quite certain that a 
total stranger is his long-lost brother, has a 
greater advantage until it comes to matters 
of detail. "We must have chaos within" 
said Nietzsche, "that we may give birth to a 
dancing star." 

In these slight notes I have suggested the 
principal strong points of the Prussian char- 
acter. A failure in honour which almost 
amounts to a failure in memory: an ego- 
mania that is honestly blind to the fact that 
the other party is an ego; and, above all, an 
actual itch for tyranny and interference, the 
devil which everywhere torments the idle 



78 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

and the proud. To these must be added a 
certain mental shapelessness which can ex- 
pand or contract without reference to reason 
or record; a potential infinity of excuses. If 
the English had been on the German side, 
the German professors would have noted 
what irresistible energies had evolved the 
Teutons. As the English are on the other 
side, the German professors will say that 
these Teutons were not sufficiently evolved. 
Or they will say that they were just suffi- 
ciently evolved to show that they were not 
Teutons. Probably they will say both. 
But the truth is that all that they call evolu- 
tion should rather be called evasion. They 
tell us they are opening windows of enlight- 
enment and doors of progress. The truth is 
that they are breaking up the whole house of 
the human intellect, that they may abscond in 
any direction. There is an ominous and al- 
most monstrous parallel between the posi- 



THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY 79 

tion of their over-rated philosophers and of 
their comparatively under-rated soldiers. 
For what their professors call roads of prog- 
ress are really routes of escape. 



LETTERS TO AN OLD GARIBALDIAN 

Italy, twice hast thou spoken; and time is athirst 
for the third. 

— Swinburne. 

My Dear 



It is a long time since we met; and I fear 
these letters may never reach you. But in 
these violent times I remember with a curi- 
ous vividness how you brandished a paint- 
brush about your easel when I was a boy ; and 
how it thrilled me to think that you had so 
brandished a bayonet against the Teutons — 
I hope w'ith the same precision and happy 
results. Round about that period, the very 
pigments seemed to have some sort of pictur- 
esque connection with your national story. 
There seemed to be something gorgeous and 

terrible about Venetian Red; and something 

80 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 81 

quite catastrophic about Burnt Sienna. But 
somehow or other, when I saw in the street 
yesterday the colours on your flag, it re- 
minded me of the colours on your palette. 

You need not fear that I shall try to en- 
tangle you or your countrymen in the mat- 
ters which it is for Italians alone to decide. 
You know the perils of either course much 
better than I do. Italy, most assuredly, has 
no need to prove her courage. She has 
risked everything in standing out that she 
could risk by coming in. The proclamations 
and press of Germany make it plain that the 
Germans have risen to a height of sensibility 
hardly to be distinguished from madness. 
Supposing the nightmare of a Prussian vic- 
tory, they will revenge themselves on things 
more remote than the Triple Alliance. 
There was a promise of peace between them 
and Belgium; there was none between them 
and England. The promise to Belgium 



82 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

they broke. The promise of England they 
invented. It is called the Treaty of Teuton- 
ism. No one ever heard of it in this coun- 
try; but it seems well known in academic cir- 
cles in Germany. It seems to be something, 
connected with the colour of one's hair. 
But I repeat that I am not concerned to in- 
terfere with your decision, save in so far as 
I may provide some materials for it by de- 
scribing our own. 

For I think the first, perhaps the only, 
fruitful work an Englishman can do now for 
the formation of foreign opinion is to talk 
about what he really understands, the condi- 
tion of British opinion. It is as simple as it 
is solid. For the first time, perhaps, what 
we call the United Kingdom entirely de- 
serves its name. There has been nothing 
like such unanimity within an Englishman's 
recollection. The Irish and even the Welsh 
were largely pro-Boers, so were some of the 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 83 

most English of the English. No one could 
have been more English than Fox, yet he de- 
nounced the war witli Napoleon. No one 
could be more English than Cobden, but he 
denounced the war in the Crimea. It is 
really extraordinary to find a united Eng- 
land. Indeed, until lately, it was extraor- 
dinary to find a united Englishman. Those 
of us who, like the present writer, repudiated 
the South African war from its beginnings, 
had yet a divided heart in the matter, and 
felt certain aspects of it as glorious as well 
as infamous. The first fact I can offer you 
is the unquestionable fact that all these 
doubts and divisions have ceased. Nor have 
they ceased by any compromise; but by a 
universal flash of faith — or, if you will, of 
suspicion. Nor were our internal conflicts 
lightly abandoned; nor our reconciliations an 
easy matter. I am, as you are, a democrat 
and a citizen of Europe ; and my friends and 



84 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

I had grown to loathe the plutocracy and 
privilege which sat in the high places of our 
country with a loathing which we thought 
no love could cast out. Of these rich men I 
will not speak here; with your permission, 
I will not think of them. War is a terrible 
business in any case ; and to some intellectual 
temperaments this is the most terrible part 
of it. That war takes the young; that war 
sunders the lovers; that all over Europe 
brides and bridegrooms are parting at the 
church door : all that is only a commonplace 
to commonplace people. To give up one's 
love for one's country is very great. But to 
give up one's hate for one's country, this may 
also have in it something of pride and some- 
thing of purification. 

What is it that has made the British peo- 
ples thus defer not only their artificial pa- 
rade of party politics but their real social and 
moral complaints and demands^ What is 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 85 

it that has united all of us against the Prus- 
sian, as against a mad dog'? It is the pres- 
ence of a certain spirit, as unmistakable as a 
pungent smell, which we feel is capable of 
withering all the good things in this world. 
The burglary of Belgium, the bribe to betray 
France, these are not excuses; they are facts. 
But they are only the facts by which wt 
came to know of the presence of the spirit. 
They do not suffice to define the whole spirit 
itself. A good rough summary is to say that 
it is the spirit of barbarism; but indeed it is 
something worse. It is the spirit of second- 
rate civilisation; and the distinction involves 
the most important differences. Granted 
that it could exist, pure barbarism could not 
last long; as pure babyhood cannot last long. 
Of his own nature the baby is interested in 
the ticking of a watch; and the time will 
come when you will have to tell him, if you 
only tell him the wrong time. And that is 



86 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

exactly what the second-rate civilisation 
does. 

But the vital point is here. The abstract 
barbarian would copy. The cockney and 
incomplete civilisation always sets itself up 
to be copied. And in the case here consid- 
ered, the German thinks that it is not only 
his business to spread education, but to spread 
compulsory education. "Science combined 
with organisation," says Professor Ostwald 
of Berlin University, "makes us terrible to 
our opponents and ensures a German future 
for Europe." That is, as shortly as it can 
be put, what we are fighting about. We are 
fighting to prevent a German future for 
Europe. We think it would be narrower, 
nastier, less sane, less capable of liberty and 
of laughter, than any of the worst parts of 
the European past. And when I cast about 
for a form in which to explain shortly why 
we think so, I thought of you. For this is 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 87 

a matter so large that I know not how to ex- 
press it except in terms of artists like you, in 
tiie service of beauty and the faith in free- 
dom. Prussia, at least cannot help me; 
Lord Palmerston, I believe, called it a coun- 
try of damned professors. Lord Palmers- 
ton, I fear, used the word "damned" more or 
less flippantly. I use it reverently. 

Rome, at her very weakest, has always 
been a river that wanders and widens and 
that waters many fields. Berlin, at its 
strongest, will never be anything but a 
whirlpool, which seeks its own centre, and is 
sucked down. It would only narrow all the 
rest of Europe, as it has already narrowed 
all the rest of Germany. There is a spirit 
of diseased egoism, which at last makes all 
things spin upon one pin-point in the brain. 
It is a spirit expressed more often in the 
slangs than in the tongues of men. The 
English call it a fad. I do not know what 



88 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

the Italians call it; the Prussians call it 
philosophy. 

Here is the sort of instance that made me 
think of you. What would you feel first, 
let us say, if I mentioned Michael Angelo*? 
For the first moment, perhaps, boredom: 
such as I feel when Americans ask me about 
Stratford-on-Avon. But, supposing that just 
fear quieted, you would feel what I and 
every one else can feel. It might be the 
sense of the majestic hands of Man upon the 
locks of the last doors of life; large and ter- 
rible hands, like those of that youth who 
poises the stone above Florence, and looks 
out upon the circle of the hills. It might be 
that huge heave of flank and chest and throat 
in "The Slave," which is like an earthquake 
lifting a whole landscape; it might be that 
tremendous Madonna, whose charity is more 
strong than death. Anyhow, your thoughts 
would be something worthy of the man's 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 89 

terrible paganism and his more terrible Chris- 
tianity. Who but God could have graven 
Michael Angelo; who came so near to grav- 
ing the Mother of God^ 

German culture deals with the matter as 
follows: — "Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475- 
1564). — (=Bernhard) ancestor of the fam- 
ily, lived in Florence about 1210. He had 
two sons, Berlinghieri and Buonarrota. By 
this name recurring frequently in later gen- 
erations, the family came to be called. It 
is a German name, compounded of Bona 
(=Bohn) and Hrodo, Roto (=Rohde, 
Rothe) Bona and Rotto are cited as Lom- 
bard names. Buonarotti is perhaps the old 
Lombard Beonrad, corresponding to the 
word Bonroth. Corresponding names are 
Mackrodt, Osterroth, Leonard." And so on, 
and so on, and so on. 'Tn his face he has al- 
ways been well-coloured . . . the eyes might 
be called small rather than large, of the 



90 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

colour of horn, but variable with 'flecks' of 
yellow and blue. Hair and beard are black. 
These particulars are confirmed by the por- 
traits. First and foremost take the portrait 
of Bugiardini in Museo Buonarotti. Here 
comes to view the 'flecked' appearance of the 
iris, especially in the right eye. The left 
may be described as almost wholly blue." 
And so on, and so on, and so on. "In the 
Museo Civico at Pavia, is a fresco likeness by 
an unknown hand, in which this fresh red is 
distinctly recognisable on the face. Taking 
all these bodily characteristics into considera- 
tion, it must be said from an anthropological 
point of view that though originally of Ger- 
man family he was a hybrid between the 
North and West brunette race." 

Would you take the trouble to prove that 
Michael Angelo was an Italian that this man 
takes to prove that he was a German*? Of 
course not. The only impression this man 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDI AN 91 

(who is a recognised Prussian historian) pro- 
duces on your mind or mine is that he does 
not care about Michael Angelo. For you, 
being an Italian, are therefore something 
more than an Italian; and I being an English- 
man, something more than an Englishman. 
But this poor fellow really cannot be any- 
thing more than a Prussian. He digs and 
digs to find dead Prussians, in the catacombs 
of Rome or under the ruins of Troy. If he 
can find one blue eye lying about somewhere, 
he is satisfied. He has no philosophy. He 
has a hobby, which is collecting Germans. 
It would probably be vain for you and me to 
point out that we could prove anything by 
the sort of ingenuity which finds the German 
"rothe" in Buonarotti. We could have 
great fun depriving Germany of all her 
geniuses in that style. We could say that 
Moltke must have been an Italian, from the 
old Latin root 7nol — indicating the sweetness 



92 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

of that general's disposition. We might say 
Bismarck was a Frenchman, since his name 
begins with the popular theatrical cry of 
"Bis !" We might say Goethe was an Eng- 
lishman, because his name begins with the 
popular sporting cry "Go!" But the ulti- 
mate difference between us and the Prussian 
professor is simply that we are not mad. 

The father of Frederick the Great, the 
founder of the more modem HohenzoUerns, 
was mad. His madness consisted of steal- 
ing giants; like an unscrupulous travelling 
showman. Any man much over six foot 
high, whether he were called the Russian 
Giant or the Irish Giant or the Chinese 
Giant or the Hottentot Giant, was in danger 
of being kidnapped and imprisoned in a 
Prussian uniform. It is the same mean sort 
of madness that is working in Prussian pro- 
fessors such as the one I have quoted. They 
can get no further than the notion of steal- 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 93 

ing giants. I will not bore you now with all 
the other giants they have tried to steal; it is 
enough to say that St. Paul, Leonardo da 
Vinci, and Shakespeare himself are among 
the monstrosities exhibited at Frederick- 
William fair — on grounds as good as those 
quoted above. But I have put this particu- 
lar case before you, as an artist rather than 
an Italian, to show what I mean when I ob- 
ject to a "German future for Europe." I 
object to something which believes very 
much in itself, and in which I do not in the 
least believe. I object to something which 
is conceited and small-minded; but which 
also has that kind of pertinacity which al- 
ways belongs to lunatics. It wants to be 
able to congratulate itself on Michael An- 
gelo; never to congratulate the world. It 
is the spirit that can be seen in those who 
go bald trying to trace a genealogy; or go 
bankrupt trying to make out a claim to some 



94 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

remote estate. The Prussian has the incon- 
sistency of the parvenu; he will labour to 
prove that he is related to some gentleman 
of the Renaissance, even while he boasts of 
being able to "buy him up." If the Italians 
were really great, why — they were really 
Germans; and if they weren't really Ger- 
mans, well then, they weren't really great. 
It is an occupation for an old maid. 

Three or four hundred years ago, in the 
sad silence that had followed the compara- 
tive failure of the noble effort of the Mid- 
dle Ages, there came upon all Europe a storm 
out of the south. Its tumult is of many 
tongues; one can hear in it the laughter of 
Rabelais, or, for that matter, the lyrics of 
Shakespeare ; but the dark heart of the storm 
was indeed more austral and volcanic; a 
noise of thunderous wings and the name of 
Michael the Archangel. And when it had 
shocked and purified the world and passed, 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 95 

a Prussian professor found a feather fallen 
to earth; and proved (in several volumes) 
that it could only have come from a Prus- 
sian Eagle. He had seen one — in a cage. 

Yours , 

G. K. Chesterton. 



My Dear , 

The facts before all Europeans to-day are 
so fundamental that I still find it easier to 
talk about them to you as to an old friend, 
rather than put it in the shape of a pamphlet. 
In my last letter I pointed out two facts 
which are pivots. The first is that, to any 
really cultured person, Prussia is second-rate. 
The second is that to almost any Prussian, 
Prussia is really first-rate; and is prepared, 
quite literally, to police the rest of the world. 

For the first matter, the comparative in- 
feriority of German culture cannot be 
doubted by people like you. One of the 



96 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

German papers pathetically said that, though 
the mangling of Malines and Rheims was 
very sad, it was a comfort to think that yet 
nobler works of art would spring up wher- 
ever the German culture had passed in tri- 
umph. From the point of view of humour, 
it is really rather sad that they never will. 
The German Emperor's idea of a Gothic 
cathedral is as provocative to the fancy as 
Mrs. Todgers' idea of a wooden leg. But I 
think it perfectly probable that they really 
intended to set up such beautiful buildings 
as they could. Having been blasphemous 
enough to ruin such things, they might well 
be blasphemous enough to replace them. 
Even if the Prussian attempt on Paris had 
not wholly collapsed as it has, I doubt 
whether the Prussians would have destroyed 
everything. I doubt whether they would 
even have destroyed the Venus de Milo. 
More probably they would have put a pair 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 97 

of arms on it, designed by some rising Ger- 
man artist — the Emperor or somebody. 
And the two arms thus added would look at 
once like the arms of a woman at a wash-tub. 
The destroyers of the tower of Rheims are 
quite capable of destroying the Tower of 
Giotto. But they are equally capable of the 
greater crime of completing it. And if they 
put on a spire, what a spire it would be! 
What an extinguisher for that clear and al- 
most transparent Christian candle! Have 
you read some of the German explanations 
of Hamlet? Did I tell you that Leonardo's 
hair must have been German hair, because 
so many of his contemporaries said it was 
beautiful? This is what I call being sec- 
ond-rate. All the German excitement about 
the colonies of England is only a half under- 
standing of what was once heroic and is now 
largely caddish. The German Emperor's 
naval vision is a bad copy of Nelson, as cer- 



98 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

tainly as Frederick the Great's verses were a 
bad copy of Voltaire. 

But the second point was even more im- 
portant; that weak as the thing is mentally 
it is strong materially ; and will impose itself 
materially if we permit it. The Prussians 
have failed in everything else ; but they have 
not failed in getting their subject thousands 
to do as they are told. They cannot put up 
black and white towers in Florence ; but they 
can really put up black and white posts in 
Alsace. They have failed in diplomacy. 
I suppose it might be called a failure in 
diplomacy to come into the fight with two 
enemies extra and one ally the less. If the 
Germans, instead of sending spies to study 
the Belgian soil, had sent spies to consider 
the Belgian soul, they would have been 
saved hard work for a week or two. They 
have failed in controversy. I suppose it 
might be called a failure in controversy to 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 99 

say that England may be keeping her word 
for some wicked purpose; while Germany 
may be breaking her word for some noble 
purpose. And that is practically all that the 
Germans can manage to say. They say that 
we are an insatiable, unscrupulous, piratical 
power; and this wild spirit whirled us into 
the mad course of respecting a treaty we had 
signed. They can find in us no treason ex- 
cept that we keep our treaties: failing to do 
this I call failing in controversy. They 
have failed in popular persuasion. They 
have had a very good opportunity. The 
British Empire does contain many people 
who have been badly treated in various ways : 
the Irish, the Boers; nay, the Americans 
themselves, whose national existence began 
with being badly treated. With these the 
Prussians have done comparatively little; 
and with Europeans of your sort nothing. 
They have never once really sympathised 



100 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

with the feeling of a Switzer for Switzer- 
land; the feeling of a Norwegian for Nor- 
way; the feeling of a Tuscan for Tuscany. 
Even when nations are neutral, Prussia can 
hardly bear them to be patriotic. Even 
when they are courting every one else they 
can praise no one but themselves. They fail 
in diplomacy, they fail in debate, they fail 
even in demagogy. They have stupid plots, 
stupid explanations, and even stupid apolo- 
gies. But there is one thing they really do 
not fail in. They do not fail in finding peo- 
ple stupid enough to carry them out. 

Now, it is this question I would ask you 
to consider; you, as a good middle type of 
the Latins, a Liberal but a Catholic, an art- 
ist but a soldier. The danger to the whole 
civilisation of which Rome was the foun- 
tain lies in this. That the more this strange 
Pruss people fail in all the other things, the 
more they will fall back on this mere fact of 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN loi 

a brutal obedience. They will give orders; 
they have nothing else to give. I say that 
this is the question for you ; I do not say, I do 
not dream of saying, that the answer is for 
me. It is for you to weigh the chance that 
their very failures in the arts of peace will 
drive them back upon the arts of war. They 
could not, and they did not, dupe your 
people in diplomacy. They did the most 
undiplomatic thing that can be done; they 
concealed a breach of partnership without 
even concealing the concealment. They in- 
stigated the intrigue in Austria in such a way 
that Italy could honestly claim all the free- 
dom of past ignorance, combined with all 
the disillusionment of present knowledge. 
They so ran the Triple Alliance that they had 
to admit your grievance, at the very moment 
when they claimed your aid. The English 
are stupider and less sensitive than you are; 
but even the English found the German 



102 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

Chancellor's diplomacy not insinuating but 
simply insulting; I swear I would be a bet- 
ter diplomatist myself. In the same way, 
there is no danger of people like you being 
corrupted in controversy. There is no fear 
that the professors who pullulate all over 
the Baltic Plain will overcome the Latins in 
logic. Some of them even claim to be super- 
logical; and say they are too big for syl- 
logisms; generally having found even one 
syllogism too big for them. If they com- 
plain either of your abstention from their 
cause or your adhesion to any other, you 
have an unanswerable answer. You will 
say, as you did say, that you did not break 
the Triple Alliance, even for the sake of 
peace. It was they who broke it for the 
sake of war. You, obviously, had as much 
right to be consulted about Servia as Aus- 
tria had; and on the mere chess-board of 
argument it is mate in one move. Nor are 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDI AN 103 

they in the least fitted to make an appeal 
to the popular sentiment of your people. 
The English, I dare say, and the French, 
have talked an amazing amount of nonsense 
about you; but they understand a little bet- 
ter. They do not write exactly like this, 
which is from the most public and accepted 
Prussian political philosopher (Chamber- 
lain). "Who can live in Italy to-day and 
mix with its amiable and highly gifted in- 
habitants without feeling with pain that here 
a great nation is lost, irredeemably lost, be- 
cause it lacks the inner driving power," etc., 
which has brought Von Kluck so trium- 
phantly through Paris. Even a half-educated 
Englishman, who has heard of no Italian 
poet except Dante, knows that he was some- 
thing more than amiable. Even a positively 
illiterate Frenchman, who has heard of no 
Italian warrior except Napoleon, knows that 
it was not in "inner driving force" that the 



104 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

artilleryman in question was deficient. 
"Who can live in Italy to-day'? " Evi- 
dently the Prussian philosopher can't. His 
impressions are taken from Italian operas; 
not from Italian streets; certainly not from 
Italian fields. As a matter of fact such im- 
ages of Italy as burn in the memories of most 
open-minded Northerners who have been 
there, are of exactly the other kind. I for 
one should be inclined to say, "Who can live 
in Italy to-day without feeling that a woman 
feeding children, or a man chopping wood, 
may almost touch him with fear with the 
fulness of their humanity : so that he can al- 
most smell blood, as one smells burning^" 
Italians often look lazy; that is, they look 
as if they would not move; but not as if 
they could not move, as many Germans do. 
But even though this formula fitted the Ital- 
ians, it seems scarcely calculated to please 
them. For the Prussians, then, with the 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDI AN 105 

failure of their diplomacy, the failure of 
their philosophy, we may also place the fail- 
ure of their appeals to a foreign people. 
The Prussian writer may continue his at- 
tempts to soothe and charm you by telling 
you that you are irredeemably lost, and that 
all great Italians must have been something 
else. But the method seems to me ill 
adapted to popular propaganda; and I can- 
not but say that on this third point of per- 
suasion, the German attempt is not striking. 
Now all this is important for this reason. 
If you consider it carefully you will see why 
Europe must, at whatever cost, break Ger- 
many in battle: and put an end to her mili- 
tary and material power to do things. If 
we all have to fight for it, if we all have to 
die for it, it must be done. If we find allies 
in the dwarfs of Greenland or the giants of 
Patagonia, it must be done. And the rea- 
son is that unless it is literally and materially 



io6 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

done, other things will be literally and ma- 
terially done; and horrify the heavens. 
They will be silly things; they will be be- 
nighted and limited and laughable things; 
but they will be accomplished things. 
Nothing could be more ridiculous, if that 
is all, than the moral position of the Prus- 
sian in Poland; where a magnificent officer, 
making a vast parade of "ruling," tries to 
cheat poor peasants out of their fields (and 
gets cheated) and then takes refuge in beat- 
ing little boys for saying their prayers in 
their native tongue. All who remember 
anything of dignity, of irony, in short of 
Rome and reason, can see why an officer 
need not, should not, had better not, and 
generally does not, beat little boys. But 
an officer can beat little boys: and a Prus- 
sian officer will go on doing it until you take 
away the stick. Nothing could be more 
comic, if that is all, than the position of 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 107 

Prussians in Alsace: which they declare to 
be purely German and admit to be furiously 
French; so that they have to terrorise 
it by sabring anybody, including cripples. 
Again, any of us can see why an officer 
need not, should not, had better not, and 
generally does not, sabre a cripple. But an 
officer can sabre a cripple; and a Prussian 
officer will go on doing it until you take 
away the sabre. It is this insane and rigid 
realism that makes their case peculiar: like 
that of a Chinaman copying something, or 
a half-witted servant taking a message. If 
they had the power to put black and white 
posts round the grave of Virgil, or dig up 
Dante to see if he had yellow hair, the mere 
doing of it which for some of us would be 
the most unlikely, would for them be the 
least unlikely thing. They do not hear the 
laughter of the ages. If they had the power 
to treat the English or Italian Premier quite 



io8 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

literally as a traitor, and shoot him against 
a wall, they are quite capable of turning 
such hysterical rhetoric into reality: and 
scattering his brains before they had col- 
lected their own. They do not feel atmos- 
pheres. They are all a little deaf; as they 
are all a little short-sighted. They are an- 
noyed when their enemies, after such ex- 
periences as those of Belgium, accuse them 
of breaking their promises. And in one 
sense they are right; for there are some sorts 
of promises they probably would keep. If 
they have promised to respect a free country, 
or an old friend, to observe a sworn partner- 
ship, or to spare a harmless population, they 
will find such restrictions chilling and irk- 
some. They will ask some professor on 
what principle they are discarding it. But 
if they have promised to shoot the cross off 
a church spire, or empty the inkpot into 
somebody's beer, or bring home somebody's 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 109 

ears in their pocket for the pleasure of 
their families, I think in these cases they 
would feel a sort of a shadow of what 
civilised men feel in the fulfilment of a 
promise, as distinct from the making of it. 
And, in consideration of such cases, I can- 
not go the whole length of those severe 
critics who say that a Prussian will never 
keep his promise. 

Unfortunately, it is precisely this sort of 
actuality and fulfilment that makes it urgent 
that Europe should put forth her whole 
energy to drag down these antique demoniacs ; 
these idiots filled with force as by fiends. 
They will do things, as a maniac will, until 
he cannot do them. To me it seemed that 
some things could not be said and done. I 
thought a rnan would have been ashamed to 
bribe a new enemy like England to betray 
an old enemy like France. I thought a man 
would have been ashamed to punish the 



no THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

pure self-defence of folk so offenceless as 
the Belgians. These hopes must go from 
us, my friend. There is only one thing 
of which the Prussian would be ashamed; 
and of that, we have sworn to God, he shall 
taste before the end. 



My Dear 

The Prussianised German, of whatever 
blend of races he may be, has one quality 
which may perhaps be racially simple; but 
which is, at any rate, very plain. Chamber- 
lain, the German philosopher or historian 
(I know not which to call him or how to call 
him either) remarks somewhere that pure- 
bred races possess fidelity; he instances the 
negro and the dog — and, I suppose, the Ger- 
man. Anyhow, it is true that there is a 
recognisable and real thing which might be 
called fidelity (or perhaps monotony) which 
exists in Germans in about the same style 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN in 

as in dogs and niggers. The North Teuton 
really has in this respect the simplicities of 
the savage and the lower animals; that he 
has no reactions. He does not laugh at him- 
self. He does not want to kick himself. 
He does not, like most of us, repent — or 
occasionally even repent of repenting. He 
does not read his own works and find them 
much worse or much better than he had ex- 
pected. He does not feel a faint irrational 
sense of debauch, after even divine pleas- 
ures of this life. Watch him at a German 
restaurant, and you will satisfy yourself that 
he does not. In short, both in the most 
scientific and in the most casual sense of the 
word, he does not know what it is to have 
a temper. He does not bend and fly back 
like steel; he sticks out, like wood. In this 
he differs from any nation I have known, 
from your nation and mine, from the French, 
the Spanish, the Scotch, the Welsh and the 



112 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

Irish. Bad luck never braces him as it does 
us. Good luck never frightens him as it 
does us. It can be seen in what the French 
call Chauvinism and we call Jingoism. For 
us it is fireworks ; for him it is daylight. On 
Mafeking Night, celebrating a small but 
picturesque success against the Boers, nearly 
everybody in London came out waving little 
flags. Nearly everybody in London is now 
heartily ashamed of it. But it would never 
occur to the Prussians not to ride their high 
horses with the freshest insolence for the far- 
off r victory of Sedan; though on that very 
anniversary the star of their fate had turned 
scornful in the sky, and Von Kluck was in 
retreat from Paris. Above all, the Prus- 
sian does not feel annoyed, as I do, when 
foreigners praise his country for all the 
wrong reasons. The Prussian will allow 
you to praise him for any reasons, for any 
length of time, for any eternity of folly; 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 113 

he is there to be praised. Probably he is 
proud of this; probably he thinks he has a 
good digestion, because the poison of praise 
does not make him sick. He thinks the ab- 
sence of such doubt, or self-knowledge, 
makes for composure, grandeur, a colossal 
calm, a superior race — in short, the whole 
claim of the Teutons to be the highest spirit- 
ual product of Nature and Evolution. But 
as I have noticed a calm unity even more 
complete, not only in dogs and negroes, but 
in slugs, slow-worms, mangoldwurzels, moss, 
mud and bits of stone, I am a sceptic about 
this test for the marshalling in rank of all 
the children of God. Now I point this out 
to you here for a very practical reason. 
The Prussian will never understand revolu- 
tions — which are generally reactions. He 
regards them, not only with dislike, but with 
a mysterious kind of pity. Throughout his 
confused popular histories, there runs a 



114 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

strange suggestion that civic populations 
have failed hitherto, and failed because they 
were always fighting. The population of 
Berlin does not fight, or can't; and therefore 
Berlin will succeed where Greece and Rome 
have failed. Hitherto it is plain enough 
that Berlin has succeeded in nothing except 
in bad copies of Greece and Rome ; and Prus- 
sians would be wiser to discuss the details 
of the Greek and Roman past, which we can 
follow, rather than the details of their own 
future, about which we are naturally not so 
well informed. Well, every dome they 
build, every pillar they put upright, every 
pedestal for epitaph or panel for decora- 
tion, every type of church, Catholic or Prot- 
estant, every kind of street, large or small, 
they have copied from the old Pagan or 
Catholic cities; and those cities, when they 
made those things, were boiling with revolu- 
tions. I remember a German professor say- 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 115 

ing to me, 'T should have no scruple about 
extinguishing such republics as Brazil, Ven- 
ezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua; they are per- 
petually rioting for one thing or another." 
I said I supposed he would have had no 
scruple in extinguishing Athens, Rome, Flor- 
ence and Paris; for they were always rioting 
for one thing or another. His reply indi- 
cated, I thought, that he felt about Csesar 
or Rienzi very much as the Scotch Presby- 
terian Minister felt about Christ, when he 
was reminded of the corn-plucking on the 
Sabbath, and said, "Weel, I dinna think the 
better of him." In other words he was quite 
positive, like all his countrymen, that he 
could impose a sort of Pax Germanica, which 
would satisfy all the needs of order and of 
freedom forever; leaving no need for revo- 
lutions or reactions. I am myself of a dif- 
ferent opinion. When I was a child, when 
the toy-trade of Germany had begun to flood 



ii6 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

this countr)^, there was a priggish British 
couplet, engraven on the minds of govern- 
esses, which ran — 

What the German children delight to make 
The English children delight to break. 

I can answer for the delight of the Eng- 
lish children; a just and godlike delight. I 
am not so sure about the delight of the Ger- 
man children, when they were caught in the 
infernal wheels of the modem civilisation of 
factories. But, for the present, I am only 
concerned to say that I do not accept this 
line of historical division. I do not think 
history supports the view that those who 
could break things could not make them. 

This is the least intrusive approach by 
which I can touch on a topic that must of 
necessity be a delicate one; yet which may 
well be a difficulty among Latins like your- 
self. Against this preposterous Prussian 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDI AN 117 

upstart we have not only to protect our 
unity; we have even to protect our quarrels. 
And the deepest of the reactions or revolts 
of which I have spoken is the quarrel which 
(very tragically as I think) has for some 
hundred years cloven the Christian from the 
Liberal ideal. It would ill become me, in 
whose country there is neither such clear doc- 
trine nor such combative democracy, to sup- 
pose it can be easy for any of you to close 
up such sacred wounds. There must still 
be Catholics who feel they can never forgive 
a Jacobin. There must still be old Repub- 
licans who feel that they could never endure 
a priest. And yet there is something, the 
mere sight of which should lock them both 
in an instant alliance. They have only to 
look northward and hold the third thing, 
which thinks itself superior to either: the 
enormous turnip-face of ce type la, as the 
French say, who conceives that he can make 



ii8 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

them both like himself and yet remain supe- 
rior to both. 

I implore you to keep out of the hands 
of this Fool the quarrel of the great saints 
and of the great blasphemers. He will do 
to religion what he will do to art; mix up 
all the colours on your palette into the col- 
our of mud : and then say that only the puri- 
fied eyes of Teutons can see that it is pure 
white. The other day the Director of 
Museums in Berlin was said to be setting 
about the creation of a new kind of Art: 
German Art. Philosophers and men of 
science were at the same time directed to 
meet round the table and found a new 
Religion: German Religion. How can 
such people appreciate art; how can they ap- 
preciate religion — nay, how can they ap- 
preciate irreligion*? How does one invent 
a messaged How does one create a Crea- 
tor? Is it not the plain meaning of the 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 119 

Gospel that it is good news? And is it not 
the plain meaning of good news that it must 
come from outside oneself? Otherwise I 
could make myself happy this moment, by 
inventing an enormous victory in Flanders. 
And I suppose (now I come to think of it) 
that the Germans do. 

By the fulness of your faith and even the 
fulness of your despair, you that remember 
Rome, have earned a right to prevent all our 
quarrels being quenched in such cold water 
from the north. But it is not too much to 
say that neither religion at its worst nor 
republicanism at its worst ever offered the 
coarse insult to all mankind that is offered 
by this new and nakedly universal mon- 
archy. 

There has always been something common 
to civilised men, whether they called it be- 
ing merely a citizen; or being merely a sin- 
ner. There has always been something 



120 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 



which your ancestors called V erecundia 
which is at once humility and dignity. 
Whatever our faults, we do not do exactly 
as the Prussians do. We do not bellow day 
and night to draw attention to our own stern 
silence. We do not praise ourselves solely 
because nobody else will praise us. I, for 
one, say at the end of these letters, as I said 
at the beginning; that in these international 
matters I have often differed from my coun- 
trymen; I have often differed from my- 
self. I shall not. claim the completeness of 
this silly creature we discuss. I shall not 
answer his boasts with boasts; but with 
blows. 

My front-door is beaten in and broken 
down suddenly. I see nothing outside, ex- 
cept a sort of smiling, straw-haired com- 
mercial traveller with a notebook open, who 
says, "Excuse me, I am a faultless being, 
I have persuaded Poland; I can count on my 



I 



LETTERS TO A GARIBALDIAN 121 

respectful Allies in Alsace. I am simply 
loved in Lorraine. Quae reggio in terris 
, . . What place is there on earth where 
the name of Prussia is not the signal for 
hopeful prayers and joyful dances? I am 
that German who has civilised Belgium; 
and delicately trimmed the frontiers of 
Denmark. And I may tell you, with the 
fulness of conviction, that I have never 
failed, and shall never fail in anything. 
Permit me, therefore, to bless your house by 
the passage of my beautiful boots; that I 
may burgle the house next door." 

And then something European that is 
prouder than pride will rise up in me; and I 
shall answer: — 

"I am that Englishman who has tortured 
Ireland, who has been tortured by South 
Africa; who knows all his mistakes, who is 
heavy with all his sins. And he tells you. 
Faultless Being, with a truth as deep as his 



122 THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY 

own guilt, and as deathless as his own re- 
membrance, that you shall not pass this 
way." 



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